Affordable Online Business Strategies
Archive for January, 2010
Keeping Up With Keyword Trends
Jan 16th
So you did your keyword research and got a nice, big list of keywords and keyword phrases. You selected keywords that had a good volume of monthly searches. The competition looks easy to beat, and you get to work creating your site. The thing is, you’re not done – not by a long shot.
First of all, markets change all of the time. What’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow. New competitors are going to try and do to you what you did to your competitors. You have to make sure that you don’t make a big marketing mistake. And that mistake is to do your keyword research once and never look back.
There’s no way to be sure that the search volume you saw when you did your research a few weeks or months ago are the same now.
A timely example is right in front of us – Valentine’s Day.
Try getting a lot of traffic for anything related to Valentine’s Day in November and December and chances are that you wouldn’t see a lot of searches or traffic. Now that we’re less than a month away from the big day, the search volume is getting really hot.
Would it be a good idea to target this market? Of course it would.
Should you go all out and put all of your efforts into a site centered around Valentine’s Day? For the short term, maybe. To make a lot of money all year long? No.
That may be an extreme example, but it points out that markets change all of the time.
What that means is that keyword research is never done. You do initial keyword research to find profitable markets. You keep doing keyword research to keep up on markets that are heating up. And you keep doing it so you make sure that you are targeting the profitable keywords.
A free tool that you can use to get an idea of what a market has done in the last few months or years is Google Trends. It won’t give you exact search volumes, but it can give you an idea of whether a market goes in cycles depending on the time of year, and if it has been gaining in search volume or if the volume has been going down over time. There is also Google Insights For Search that will give you similar data.
If you have a list of keywords that you created a few weeks ago and haven’t gotten around to creating content, take a little time and update the results. If you’ve got a site that you’re driving traffic to, go back and revisit some of your main key phrases to make sure that they’re the best ones to target. You’re also likely to find a few new keywords that you missed the first time around.
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Tips On Using PLR Products For Maximum Profits
Jan 16th
When most of us get started with this “Internet Marketing” thing, we have a lot to learn. One of the first things that we learn is that it’s not enough to have a web site. You have to have something to sell if you want to make money. Affiliate products are good, and your own products are better. When you have your own product, you get to keep all of the money.
Not all of us know how to create a product, want to create a product, and/or we don’t want to wait around to get a product created before we start making any profits. One solution is Private Label Rights products. There are a lot of sites where you can buy these products for next to nothing. So you can buy these products, sell them and keep all of the profits.
If only it were that easy…
I have collected a lot of PLR products, and while the idea is good, often the products are not good. So the first step before you decide to sell anything is to actually read or use the product yourself. Some of these products are hard to read and have little real value. Some of these products have outdated information. A good example of this are ebooks that guide you through keyword research. I have private label rights ebooks that I purchased in the last couple of months that recommended using the overture keyword tool.
No one is recommending the Overture keyword tool anymore. I don’t even know if it is available anymore. So it wouldn’t make sense to sell the ebook the way it is and expect my customers to be happy. So what can you do?
That’s where the power of PLR products comes in. With most PLR products, you can change the product in any way you want. You can change the graphics, add content, change content, and put your name on it. You should edit any PLR product you get. The reason for that is if several people are trying to sell the same product without any changes, they are going to have a lot of competition.
If you create new graphics for the product, add to and/or rewrite the content, rename the product, add unique bonuses, and edit the sales page, you will be the only one selling that exact same product. As a bonus, you’ll get better at copywriting and editing.
PLR products are useful because you can get them at a low cost, you don’t have to spend a lot of time researching and compiling the information, and you can learn how to market products without a lot of up front costs. With Private Label Rights products, you can start selling your own products in no time. I don’t have a favorite source that I can recommend. The easiest way to find what you want is to go to Google and type in your market and PLR. For example “internet marketing private label rights”. Good luck and have fun.
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Targeted Keywords And Free Traffic
Jan 15th
Getting good rankings in the search engines is something that all of us want. Where a lot of people fail is that they either don’t take the time to create a list of keywords that they want to target, or they try to rank for seveal keywords on their index page.
So the starting point is to select the keywords you want to rank for. Your first task is to create a list of keywords that you want to target. Along with that, you want to collect a list of secondary keywords and key phrases that you can use along with the primary keywords. This list will also help you to write keyword rich content for your site.
Once you have a list of keywords, it’s time to take a look at the competition. If there is little or no competition, that keyword may not be one that will make you any money.If there is a lot of competition, you are less likely to get a good ranking, or at the very least it will take a long time to get there.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you decide that video game consoles are selling well, and the search volume is very high. So you go to Amazon.com, sign up for an affiliate account, and decide to sell Xbox 360 games and consoles. If you type your keywords into Google, you’ll see that your competition are the big companies like Walmart, BestBuy, Target, etc.
Since you are very unlikely to ever outrank these sites, it probably isn’t a good idea to spend the time to target this market, at least not if you want free search engine traffic. If you’re not on the first or second page of search results, you’re not going to get much free traffic. So a top 100 listing won’t do you much good.
That’s not to say that you can’t enter a competitive market. It’s just that there’s no reason to spend time on a keyword or key phrase that is too hard to rank for.
Here’s the good news. Since you have a large list of keywords that you’re targeting, you can cross off the ones that are too competitive and move on to the ones that are easier to rank for. Often you’ll find that keyword phrases that contain 2, 3, or more words will be easier to rank for.
The bottom line is this:
To give your web pages the best chance of getting free traffic, do your keyword research before you create your content. Once you have your keywords selected, create pages targeting those keywords. Try to target one main keyword to a page along with 3-5 related keywords. Doing the keyword research first is going to go a long way toward getting you good ranking web pages and free traffic.
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Getting Free Headers For Your Web Sites
Jan 12th
What web page would be complete without graphics? Most web sites have graphics somewhere on the page, and one of the most noticeable type of graphic is the header graphic. It’s at the top of the page and can really make a site stand out.
The only problem is that if you don’t have the software and skills to create your own header graphics, you either have to do without them or pay someone to create them for you. You can also buy packages of header graphics that you can customize for your own needs if you have the software and skill to make them work for your site.
The good news is that there is a way to get stunning header graphics that you can customize with the text and additional graphics of your choice. It from the same company that brought you Xsite Pro 2 (you do use this, don’t you?), and it’s called Xheader – the free header/banner design software. Did I mention that it is FREE?
There is no Pro version, just one version, the free version. No ads, no upsells, just tons of banners you can customize, all for free.
Here’s what happens once you download and install Xheader:
You open the software to scroll through the hundreds of banners you can choose from. They are sorted into categories so it makes it easier to find something that you like.
Click on the banner to open it in the software. Here you’ll be able to add text to the banner graphic. You can select from several fonts, sizes, colors, and effects. There are a lot of options, so experiment a little to get a feel for what you can do. You can move the text anywhere you want on the banner.
You can also import a graphic or picture that you have on your hard drive. For example, you could insert a picture of yourself right into the banner.
Once you’re done with the header, you can resize the banner to fit your web page, and you can select the quality of graphic you want to save. The higher the quality the bigger the file, but it’s up to you. Then you can export it as a jpg file and use on your web site.
One quick tip is to save it as the default file type first, and then save it as a jpg. This is because Xheader won’t open jpg files, and if you want to change the header without having to start from scratch, you can open the XHF header, make the changes, and use it on your site.
There are a couple of video tutorials that you can watch that will show you how to use the software. You have nothing to lose by trying out Xheader. It’s free and easy to use. You can have professional header graphics without having to pay anyone to do it for you or having to learn how to use some expensive software. Click here to download Xheader…
Hard Times Ahead For Affiliates And PPC?
Jan 9th
Affiliate marketing is often a recommended way for new marketers to get started. Of course, the number one task for any marketing is to get traffic to the sales page. That can take some time, work, and learning how to master the different types of traffic – SEO, articles, blog posts, list building…
Along came pay per click advertising, and Google Cash. A way for affiliates to get almost instant traffic and make commissions. Since Google Cash first came out,. there have been countless courses, articles, software, and membership sites that have shown how to profit by selling affiliate products using PPC.
Apparently, it’s getting a lot more difficult for affiliates to even keep their accounts, let alone make any profits. It looks like Google has been cracking down on affiliate marketers who use PPC. They are taking a close look at what is on the landing page of the ad, and if it is nothing more than a page with a link to an affiliate offer, then the ad is likely to be rejected.
I found out about this from a post on the Perry Marshall blog, and then I did a little research for myself. I came across a thread at webmastersworld.com that explains what is happening over at Google. Click here to read it. What I found surprising is that there are a few people who are actually glad that affiliates are having their accounts banned. Some people do not like affiliates who use adwords.
Does this mean affiliate marketing is dead? Not at all. What this does is point out an important point about online marketing in general. You should never rely on any one source of traffic. If you’re an affiliate who only uses adwords, your business could be in trouble. It also means that if you use PPC you should keep a close eye on your ad campaigns to make sure that you’re not spending more money than you’re making.
The Internet keeps changing all of the time. What works today may not be effective a few weeks or months from now. Remember when free classified ads and Free For All Links sites were the hot thing? Not anymore. Should you avoid PPC? Not at all. It just means that you need to do your homework, follow Google’s guidelines, be ready to adapt where necessary, test and track what works and stop doing what doesn’t work.
Because PPC is changing, it’s really important to make sure any information you get is current. A guide you purchased a couple of years ago may have some advice that can get you in trouble now. So do your research by going to forums, reading the current guidelines, and reading blogs that are about PPC. And don’t rely on one source of traffic.
2 Ways To Find Profitable Affiliate Offers
Jan 7th
I want to cover an aspect of affiliate marketing that is very important if you want to have a profitable business. In a perfect world, you should buy every product that you have an interest in promoting so you can see if it is something that will provide value to the people you recommend it to. Unfortunately, that can add up to a lot of cash up front, especially if you’re entering several markets or testing out new ones.
You don’t have to buy the product to see if it’s any good. Still, there are two important steps I recommend that you take before you take the time to create a marketing campaign for an affiliate product.
1. The first thing you can do is to do a search for reviews of the product you have in mind. Enter “product name review” and start visiting the sites that come up. A lot of these sites are going to be other affiliates that are promoting the product. Some of these sites will be pretty basic and just a pitch for the product. Other sites will be really good, and worthy of taking notes. Again, don’t copy, but learn from what they do and use this information to create your promotions.
Another thing that you should look for are forums that come up in the search engine results. Here is where you can see what people who have actually purchased the product think of it. This is pure gold! If the product is good, and the customers are happy, you’ll be able to read why they like the product. You can take notes and use these notes to craft your promotion. It is also a good indicator that the product will sell well. If there are a lot of complaints, remove this product from your list and move on to the next one.
2. Go and read the sales page for each product that you are considering. I mean really read it, word for word. Does the sales message draw you in? Are the testimonials well written and convincing? Does the sales letter do a good job of selling the product with bullet points and benefits for the reader?
This is so important because if you’re going to spend the time and/or money to promote a product, you want to presell the reader and let the sales page get the visitor to click on the order link and buy. If the sales page is full of typos, has bad graphics, or is just a poor excuse for a sales letter, don’t waste your time.
The good news is that there are so many products out there for you to promote that you don’t have to settle for any of them. Don’t just look at how much you’ll make for each sale. That won’t do you much good if the product has a lot of refunds and complaints, or if the sales page is not good at converting visitors into buyers.
Marlon Sanders Free video shows you how to promote anything in 3 easy steps. Click here for free access.
